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[MrWiggles]

I like embarking on freezing biomes with aquifers.

Thats totally fun, and harrowing. Really makes the first three years a pain in ass.

Except for farming, just get to the first aquifer, and make a manual pump.

[peregarrett]

Artificial undergroung river. Waterwheels that aren't subjected to roaming titan. Watefalls for free...
Also fun with digging upward and "quickly, put doors here, here and here till it's not too late!"
Sure I like aquifers!

[Mimidormi]

I love aquifers.
To me they mean infinite water source AND sponge, instant well, a safe fishing zone spawning only critters, basically, all the advantages of a river not exposed to the outside or the caverns, plus an infinite drain for water.

I used to dread them in my early days playing, because of some misunderstanding with their description, cause of language differences (i used to think they flooded uncontrollably at random, on their whole level, even beyond constructed walls. What, why are you laughing?).
But then, i started facing them gradually, because of some promising embarks i didn't want to reject, and started to appreciate them instead. I started by digging near exposed magma pipes (40d), then tried the cave-in method in some other maps, until i followed the pump method of the wiki, and now i'm kinda the opposite, i'm tempted to not embark in places -without- them. I'm addicted to their 'secrecy', i suppose.

you can't make pumps without brining the stone with you

I don't want to nitpick, but you can make pumps and machinery entirely out of wood, the only thing you're missing out without the stone are the gear assemblies (not counting the metal ones).

[FreakyCheeseMan]

Being a paranoid anti-fun builder, I'm also very happy about aquifers providing water without opening my flank up to infiltration by swimming building destroyers.

Hah, you think *that's* paranoid? I use them as a safe source of water when I can get a partial aquifer- the rest of the time I just make sure that my river water source gets routed through a line of natural-rock fortifications before entering my fortress. I use natural rock fortifications rather than constructed fortifications because I'm convinced that at any moment Today is going to program in creatures that can destroy constructions. He probably already has. They're hidden somewhere in the RAWS, waiting for me to let insufficiently filtered water into my fortress.

You can laugh now, but when your dwarves are all getting eaten by mutant toad creatures, mine will happily be being eaten by the hordes of starving dwarven babies I accidentally created in a misguided effort to deal with lack of migrants.

...god damn I'm glad I'm not a dwarf.

[Shrugging Khan]

Hah. I suppose I'm too trusting when it comes to the toad.

[Patchy]

I love them. Once you know how to utilise them, they extremely handy to have. The first thing I taught myself back in 40d after I figured out how to do my food and booze industries was how to breach and use aquifers. Why? Well it was because of all the fear and general hatred of the things I saw on the forums, so I decided it was gonna be my first challenge. My very first aquifer pierce was using the pump method on a 2z-level aquifer on an isolated island. I'd later go on to learn how to cave-in and freeze my way through them as well, though the cave-in is my preferred method now. Well anyways a dozen or so flooded forts later, I think I'm fairly proficient with them.

You can do things like a very quick underground treefarm, farmzone, and even really easy drowning traps.

And some other things given a flat embark, a soil layer aquifer is always 1 z-lvl + its drainage level except in sand deserts where it can potentially be 2 z-lvls + its drainage. If you have 2 soil layers marked as aquifer, it'll be those those 2 z-lvls of aquifer + the drainage below the 2nd one. The aquifer will never appear in the top 2 soil layers. Sandstone, and conglomerate are the only stone layer aquifers with puddingstone the only mineral aquifer. Due to the nature of rock layers which sandstone and conglomerate are, they can be some 3 to 7 z lvls thick meaning 3 to 7 z-lvls of aquifer + the drainage lvl at the bottom. Conglomerate is just a pain, but sandstone is actually fairly easy to use the dig through mineral method on in 31x. Since large clusters appear everywhere right now, and all the large clusters that can appear in sandstone are non-aquiferous, which means if you line your shaft up with the center of a 48x48 embark tile you'll likely be able to dig straight through the bauxite, magnetite, kaolinite, etc clusters of sandstone and be totally dry. Conglomerate doesn't work that way though because of the puddingstone which appears in it with quite a bit of frequency.

[TolyK]

I LIKE volcanoes and multi-layer aquifers. guess why 

(HINT: the trick is that the stone around the volcano is always dry. dig through that, lower, and PRESTO! infinite magma AND water! plus if it's a good day there might will most likely be lots of ore.)

try it sometime. remember to set volcano x-variance high in worldgen 

[Schmlok]

If you know there's going to be an aquifer, then EMBARK WITH STONE enough to build some mechanisms, and feed some strange moods.  Just like if you were embarking in a desert, wood might be a good idea.

And you can make an all wood screw pump btw

I've never had the collapse method be easy or effective.

[Funtimes]

I like them. I wish there was an available utility to create aquifer tiles to convert people to loving them. They're just so... useful.

[Shrugging Khan]

I always bring stone along on my embarks. Marble usually...either to have some flux in case there's none to be found, or otherwise so I have some pretty stones to build a little monument with.

[Internet Kraken]

I HATE aquifers. I've tried playing with them, and they just kill the fun. See, I like ocean embarks, in which I build a fort above the sea itself. This requires massive quantities of stone. Multiple layer aquifers across the entire map make this fucking impossible to obtain. If there was easier method of getting through them I would play with them, but as it stands now there just not enjoyable in any way. So I mod them out of the game.

Besides, I already have enough bad experiences with fortress flooding.

[Vehudur]

If you want unlimited water from an aquifer without the aquifer, add this to your raws in inorganic_stone_mineral.txt:

Code: [Select]

[INORGANIC:AQUITE]
[AQUIFER]
[USE_MATERIAL_TEMPLATE:STONE_TEMPLATE]
[ENVIRONMENT:SEDIMENTARY:CLUSTER_SMALL:25]
[ENVIRONMENT:METAMORPHIC:CLUSTER_SMALL:25]
[ENVIRONMENT:IGNEOUS_ALL:CLUSTER_SMALL:25]
[STATE_NAME_ADJ:ALL_SOLID:aquite]
[DISPLAY_COLOR:1:7:1][TILE:5}
[UNDIGGABLE]
[IS_STONE]
Yes, it really works.  If you give it more than 25 frequency, it shows up often enough to be annoying, but with 25 you're almost guaranteed to have it show up at least once per embark tile.  If you wish, you can remove the [UNDIGGABLE] tag - I only put that in so I didn't accidentally remove it completely.

[Dorf3000]

I'm not a big fan of aquifers in stone, because quite often they'll intersect the top of the caverns and leak into them at certain points.  They are immensely useful if they don't cover your planned entrance, as they provide a high-up source of water that you can tap into when you're ready and won't drain FPS like a river or pond flowing about.  Not having to pump water up from a cavern or have an open route from the surface to the fort saves lots of headaches.

Possibly the worst aquifers are in freezing zones, as they'll quite often ice your only miner and/or pick, and when it freezes it doesn't form a floor above the ice, making it hard to channel into again.  Even the cave-in method is safer than ice.

[Jachim]

You know, the one you didn't particularly like, but had to put up with Especially when your mother invited him to your birthday party, where he spent his evening drinking all the cola and wetting himself...

Yahtzee is the best game reviewer ever. Much kudos for sneaking in a quote of his.

Anyway, I hate aquifers but deal with them as part of the challenge of the game. :]

[Shurikane]

Since I favor megaconstructions that use up lots of stone, I don't especially look for aquifers.

I did seek one once.  I first pierced into it.  Then I went to the ocean and tunneled into the aquifer.

My FPS went and demolished itself.  It was totally worth it.